EVOLUTION 31 



Darwin arrived at organic Evolution by the consideration 

 ^! of an immense mass of bidlogical evidence, and out of his 

 \ generalization there has also arisen a philosophy of 

 » Evolution. 



So far as concerns Evolution in the abstract the two 

 systems have now become welded. Even if with advancing 

 knowledge it could be shown that all Evolution is Dar- 

 winian — and this is far from being the case at present — 

 there would still be no divergence in main principle 

 between the two founders, because Spencer was thoroughly 

 Darwinian in his recognition of Selection, and Darwin was 

 equally Spencerian in recognizing the evolutionary prin- 

 ciple where Selection had not been shown to be applicable. 

 In view of this coalescence of results it may be per- 

 missible therefore to examine somewhat more closely 

 into this all-important question of validity of method. 

 And in the first place let it be understood — for there is no 

 point on which public judgement is more apt to err — that 

 in Science soundness of method by no means implies 

 infallibility of results. We declare unhesitatingly that 

 the scientific method is sound, but we also recognize that 

 the method can deal only with facts and observations 

 learnt by a being of finite mind with sense organs of 

 a limited range. And so with increase of knowledge 

 resulting from improved methods of experiment and 

 observation — ^in other words, from a perfecting of our 

 methods of gleaning information from Nature, this same 

 scientific method enables us to amplify, check, revise, 

 correct or modify previous results. We grope our way 

 towards truth by laborious and tortuous paths ; we stray 

 into many blind alleys and are led astray by many false 

 scents and occasionally we fall headlong into a pit from 

 which a later generation has to dig us out. It may not 

 be paradoxical to say of Science that her main strength 

 lies in her being cognizant of her fallibility. As Professor 

 Macallum, quoting a saying by Duclaux, well puts it in his 

 recent address to the physiological section of the British 

 Association : ' The reason why Science advances is that 



